Dandelions in Lawn

greenbee

droopsnoot said:

I tend to pull the yellow flowers off the plant and then leave them on the path nearby, in the hope that the bees can still get something from them. I've recently put some 4 in 1 down on the lawn, but I can't say it's done much good yet. I can never get the full root out because I'd have to damage so much lawn to do so. I know some like them to go a bit wild, but it just looks so untidy - I don't get a nice colourful mix of wild flowers, I just get straggly green weeds. 

If you want a nice colourful mix of wildflowers you have to put the work in over several years. You'll get lots of dandelions and hawkweed and plantains and creeping buttercup to begin with. But if you add yellow rattle (plugs work best) and maybe plant primroses and cowslips and snowdrops, and sow some seeds, and don't mow until after the plants have dropped their seeds, over the course of a few years you'll see a change. I have cuckoo flower and speedwell this year, which weren't here last year (my first year in this garden). 

droopsnoot

greenbee said:

droopsnoot said:

I tend to pull the yellow flowers off the plant and then leave them on the path nearby, in the hope that the bees can still get something from them. I've recently put some 4 in 1 down on the lawn, but I can't say it's done much good yet. I can never get the full root out because I'd have to damage so much lawn to do so. I know some like them to go a bit wild, but it just looks so untidy - I don't get a nice colourful mix of wild flowers, I just get straggly green weeds. 

If you want a nice colourful mix of wildflowers you have to put the work in over several years. You'll get lots of dandelions and hawkweed and plantains and creeping buttercup to begin with. But if you add yellow rattle (plugs work best) and maybe plant primroses and cowslips and snowdrops, and sow some seeds, and don't mow until after the plants have dropped their seeds, over the course of a few years you'll see a change. I have cuckoo flower and speedwell this year, which weren't here last year (my first year in this garden). 

I don't really - ideally I'd like my lawns to be nice, green and perfect (but without putting the work in, obviously) and the flower borders to have all the flowers in. I'd even like to get them flat enough to use the old push-along mower with the roller on the back so I can have stripes, even thought the shape of the lawns means that's really difficult to achieve.

All I meant was that if I'm going to have other stuff in the lawns, it'd be nice if it was a bit nicer to look at than just the stuff I have in it now.